


Reprise

by Ias



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, Time Loop, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-11 00:05:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15303039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: This is the second attempt.





	1. Chapter 1

They send the last hunting parties south on the solstice of a summer which never comes.

The remaining officers stand with the men on _Terror’s_ deck to see the sledges off. The uproar which accompanied the first lead parties of spring had seemed loud enough to shatter the ice, a clamor of hands slapping the wood of the ship and voices raised in wordless shouts that had put a smile on every face even after the long hardship of winter.

Well. Every face but one. By that point, Francis Crozier had already become the architect of his own demise; and perhaps, of James’s as well.

Today, the air is still and silent. Where on that first spring morning Sir John had given a rousing speech to the lead parties extolling the certainty that their mission would soon be a success, today their expedition’s commander stands silent at the rail of the main deck, his smile distant. Three cheers go up from the men as the parties set off in the three southerly directions, and Fitzjames’s smile is as fixed as the ice around their ship, a single point of darkness in an otherwise white plain.

Somewhere to the north, moored in the center of that void, _Erebus_ lies in wait. Empty, lamed, abandoned. Fitzjames does not turn to glance over his shoulder in the direction he knows the ship will lie, far out of sight.

Francis Crozier is a specter at the feast, grey-faced and sour, his shoulders hunched beneath his dark greatcoat as he stares not at the hunting parties, but beyond them—to the ice. Fitzjames makes every effort not to even glance at the man, but the eye has a tendency to be drawn to that which offends it.

Crozier is the first of the officers to make his excuses, nodding stiffly to the other officers before making his way below. He meets Fitzjames’s eyes for the first and only time as he passed. When Crozier steps past him, Fitzjames cannot resist the urge to inhale. Sure enough, the sharpness of whiskey hangs around Crozier like his own personal storm cloud.

Immediately, Fitzjames looks sharply to Sir John. But their expedition leader’s attention is focused on waving at the hunting parties’ retreating backs, a vapid smile on his face.

As the rest of the officers file away one by one, Fitzjames remains; hands clasped behind his back and his chin held high, watching the hunting parties grow smaller less distinct as they creep towards the horizon. When Sir John turns to him, the smile on his lips slips away entirely. “James.” The good cheer in his voice is forced. “I hope to see you at dinner tonight.”

It’s a question that is not a question. Fitzjames inclines his head in response. “Of course, Sir John.” As he watches the expedition commander’s receding back, a the near-constant niggling in the pit of his stomach returns. Sir John’s invitation is pointed. There is certainly, then, something they need to discuss—something regarding the secret the two of them unwillingly share.

When his body cannot withstand the strain of standing at the railing and staring out over the ice, Fitzjames walks the deck.

It is not _technically_ pacing. His duties as an officer include supervising the work on deck; and though there is little work to be done, frozen in as they are, the pretense still remains. His boots crunch the thin rime of ice on the deck, working the stiffness from frozen joints. If he is working the restlessness from his mind simultaneously, there is surely no harm in it. Even with the first day of spring long behind them, the air is cold enough to make any patch of exposed skin burn as if aflame.

The men knuckle their cap brims as he passes, their faces red from the long exposure where the Welsh wigs and mufflers can’t cover. Fitzjames nods in acknowledgement; even if, in recent weeks, it has seemed the men’s gestures of deference have been slower to come and quicker to fall away. He has noticed a certain glint in their eyes, when they believe themselves unobserved. The more time that passes without a thaw, the more the resentment builds within _Terror’s_ timbers like gas inside a cask of fetid meat.

Twice as many men stand watch on deck, though there’s little for them to do but stare at the craggy ice around them. Less room for them below, where the crews of two ships have been packed into one. There is absolutely no space below decks, spare or otherwise. Even the officers are packed in like sardines, and have been for the past year and a half; ever since they loaded every last man onto _Terror_ and abandoned _Erebus_ to her utterly avoidable fate.

The memory, as sharp and clear in his mind now as the Arctic springtime sun, makes Fitzjames’s mouth twist as if he is moving a dry stone from one cheek to the other. How Fitzjames had stepped into the wardroom on behest of his steward, long after dinner had passed—and found Crozier waiting for him, as close to sober as Fitzjames had ever seen him.

For an hour, perhaps two, they had spoken. Crozier’s words—James could not recall his words. Only the feel of them; how they had wound through the air like curls of smoke, like the aurora that Fitzjames would not see until the ice locked around their ship; how Crozier’s arguments were so logical. So persuasive. So carefully tailored to every one of James’s sensibilities and opinions and doubts. As if Crozier had poured over a schematic of Fitzjames’s mind like he might pour over a map of this frozen hell, and plot out the swiftest course inward. Bringing with him the three words that would ultimately damn them both: _go for broke_.

Fitzjames shifts his shoulders as he walks, narrowly resisting the urge to shake his head like a horse beleaguered by a fly. Instead he raises his eyes to the lone figure at the portside railing, standing with a spyglass to his eye. In a moment, Fitzjames joins him.

“Mr. Blanky,” he says, projecting what ease he can muster with every muscle tensed up from the cold.

The ice master lowers the glass to knuckle his cap. “Commander Fitzjames,” he says, gruff as always. There’s a wariness in his eyes that has failed to dissipate in the months they’ve been aboard together. Fitzjames has never once seen the man smile—but in the presence of Captain Crozier, of course. And perhaps that, above all else, is why Fitzjames vaguely dislikes the man.

“How’s their progress?” he asks, his voice carefully cordial. Sir John is quite insistent that at all times the officers remain “cheerful in their manner, both outward and in.” Fitzjames understands the importance of such a prescription. Still, the tone grits on his tongue like sand.

“Lieutenant Irving’s party will be out of sight of _Terror_ in less than an hour, I’d wager,” Blanky replies, passing the glass over to Fitzjames. “Gore’s slowed down a bit now that they’ve reached the pressure ridge. But our Mr. Goodsir is keeping good pace.”  

He raises it to his eye, careful not to touch the metal to bare skin. In the narrow scope of the glass, the first hunting party of the year has by now become a smear against the pressure ridge to the south. Without his glass, the men bleed into each other—becoming a multi-legged patch of darkness that ambles its way up the slope of the ice. 

“I had thought that sheltering on the leeward side of King William Land was meant to protect us from ridges such as that,” Fitzjames says.

Again, Blanky’s flat stare. “You think that little hillock is a formidable piece of geography, sir, you ought to see what we’d be facing out on the pack. And without a thaw last winter, that ice is pushing its way into the mouth of our safe harbor like a powder down a musket barrel.”  

This is the point when Sir John would once again comment on the good fortune that they should have decided to overwinter in this sheltered place. Fitzjames hands the glass back silently.

“Let’s hope the hunting parties find luck this year,” Fitzjames says.

“I’d rather they find game.” Blanky scratches at the back of his neck. “I hear him and Lieutenant Hodgson have a wager going as to who can net more ptarmigans by the end of the week. But you didn’t hear it from me, sir.”

Fitzjames would like to be able to say he has more important things to do than reprimand his fellow officers for illegal betting, but that would not be strictly true. 

“It is good to have the sun as our daily companion again,” Fitzjames says, looking towards the prow; and indeed it hangs low in the sky, a pale white wraith that bleeds into the haze around it, yet farther above the horizon than they’ve seen it this year. The light shines around it in a second corona, a pale golden crown—or the edge of a yellow iris, with that misty pupil staring sightlessly out of the center. Fitzjames turns away from it, and the faint apprehension the sun dog brings, to smile his officer’s smile at Blanky. “I’m sure we’ll see signs of a thaw within the week.”

Blanky looks at him. “Let’s all certainly hope so, sir,” he says, in a tone that suggests he knows something Fitzjames does not.

 

* * *

 

 

“It is really quite remarkable.” Sir John smiles benevolently at the officers seated at the table around him, the dull scratch of utensils on china punctuating his words. Every time the officers assemble in the wardroom—which, on Sir John’s insistence, is almost every night—the room seems to grow a little smaller.

Captain Crozier, of course, has not graced them with his presence.

“That the ice should linger so long,” Sir John continues, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.

Hodgson pauses with his utensils hanging over his food. “What do the Ice Masters make of it?” With his hands held aloft and his wide, bulging eyes, he looks quite the part of an oversized chipmunk. But perhaps Fitzjames is being unkind. He takes another long draught of brandy.

The meat on his plate is only half-picked at, though he will choke the rest down before the end of the meal out of necessity alone. Today it’s seal, again. The meat has an oily taste and an oily texture, more rubbery fat than meat. It had been Crozier, also, who first raised concerns about the contamination of their canned food supplies. How on earth the man had become suspicious even of a can of roast beef was utterly baffling. The man sought out horrors around every corner—but the worst thing of all was the fact that he had been _right_. The objective proof that their four-year food supply was all but spoiled had been a deciding factor in urging Sir John to caution. He and Crozier—

James lifts his brandy glass and inhales without drinking, slow and long. He makes a conscious effort to avoid using those two words in a sentence these days.

“Mr. Reid and Mr. Blanky have seen nothing of the like,” Sir John says. “But they acknowledge that the climate of this region is as yet largely unknown. We may be discovering a new phenomenon as we speak.”

Unspoken behind his words is the memory of what they were _meant_ to be discovering—what now lies beyond their grasp. Fitzjames stabs at the seal flesh on his plate and does not look at the single empty chair at the table. Neither does he think of the man meant to be occupying it.

“And what do they say,” Irving is saying, still carefully avoiding eye contact with anyone, “of the chances we will see a thaw yet this summer?”  

“We’ve overwintered here nearly eight months already,” Fitzjames says before anyone else can speak. His fingers grip the stem of his brandy glass only slightly harder than necessary. “Certainly the ice will not hold out much longer.”

“James is quite right,” Sir John says after a moment. He laces his fingers together over his belly and tips his chin to his chest, so he might regard his officers with an expression no doubt meant to be authoritative. “We must keep our spirits high. Especially if we are to attempt the Passage come the thaw.”

The silence in the room is broken only by the rhythmic ticking of Sir John’s clock, brought over from Erebus before they abandoned the ship. Irving sips his brandy, his eyes fixed firmly on the wooden backboard a foot to the left of Sir John’s head; Hodgson’s bulging eyes remain on his food. Only Lieutenant Little sets down his utensils, a frown creasing his expression.

“Sir,” he says cautiously. “My understanding was that, upon the thaw, we would be returning to Baffin Bay.” _And to England, in disgrace_. “What with the—issues, with our tinned foods…”

Sir John blinks at him. “The effect in our canned supplies is, of course, a most discouraging setback,” he says. “But our hunting parties have seen some luck, when they can get far south enough; and of course, with our success at fishing the ice holes, our stocks of fresh meat are improved even from when we first departed last year. _When_ the thaw comes this summer, late as it may be, we will be perfectly positioned to continue on our original trajectory through the Passage, and emerge  at the Sandwich Isles before the summer has even reached its midpoint.”

Sir John leans forward, smiling at each carefully blank face around the table in turn. “I understand that our spirits are low, gentlemen. This expedition has been very unlike the one we all signed on to two years ago. But we are _not_ beyond hope of success.”

Sir John’s expression enforces reassurance. The officers a the table are _required_ to be reassured. “We are closer now than any have come before us, gentlemen. Why should we turn back when we already stand on the threshold of history?”

One of the stewards refills James’s glass, and he downs half its contents in a single draft. The thought of arguing is remote; the time for that will no doubt come. The only clear thought which makes it to the surface of his mind is that Francs will need to be told.

James rotates his brandy glass where it sits on the table without raising it, and allows himself, for as long as it takes him to turn the glass a full circuit, to indulge utterly in fury. The thought of a third winter, a whole year entire, with their food supplies dwindling and their boredom mounting like a great wave, is enough to make him want to dash this delicate crystal glass against Sir John’s preposterous grandfather clock, squeezed into the narrow space with its incessant ticking.

Like a dial turned back to zero, he completes the glass’s turn. And looks up to meet sir John’s eye with a smile, and raises it in an informal toast.

“When the thaw comes,” he says, “we shall all of us be glad to get anywhere.”

Sir John holds his gaze for a moment longer, a question in his gaze; but Fitzjames looks away to avoid the scrutiny, and focuses on choking down the last of his rubbery seal.

When at long last the tableware is cleared and the last of the brandy drunk, Fitzjames is the first to rise. He has no other duties to attend to tonight; all there is left to do is return to his berth and stare at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to come as he listened to the rustlings of men pressing closer and closer about him. And even that is more appealing than the little cough Sir John gives as soon as he pushes his chair back, his eyebrows raised expectantly as Fitzjames meets his gaze.

“James. I wonder if you might remain behind for a moment?”

He smiles, with some difficulty, and settles back into his chair as the rest of the officers file out.  Leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers in front of his chest, he waits for Irving to slide the door closed before speaking. “All is well, I hope, Sir John?”

“That is what I hoped to discuss.” Sir John crosses his legs.  When they meet each other’s gaze, it is from across the invisible wall which rose between them over the course of the winter. James has long since given up attempting to climb it. “I am beginning to grow concerned that some of the men—and indeed, some of the officers—may be suffering from low spirits. I had hoped the return of the sun would signal a change in attitude.”

James shrugs. “It is only reasonable that the men should feel discouraged.”

Sir John’s eyebrows inch upward. “And what makes you say that, James?”

“We have been in close quarters for the past eight months of winter, since we—abandoned _Erebus._ ” The words sour on his tongue. “The men do not understand why their rations have been cut, when we seemingly have so many tinned provisions left; and we are cold, and tired, and far from home, with little in the way of comfort or distraction. The men do what they can to keep busy, but…” He holds out his hands. “There is only so much to be done on a ship which cannot sail.”

Sir John leans back in his seat to inspect Fitzjames down his nose. “And what of yourself?” he says, his voice conspicuously light. “I have noticed, of late, a slight change in your temperament—it’s been quite some time since you regaled us with one of your delightful stories.”

“I’m afraid after all this time, I must be running short,” Fitzjames says. He fixes his face in an easy smile, and taps his thumb on the inside of his palm. “I assure you, Sir John, I am quite well. In body and in spirit.”

“Your reassurances are much appreciated,” Sir John says with a smile that does not reach his eyes. The pause stretches long enough that Fitzjames cannot bear it. He knows quite well why Sir John has requested his presence today. Where once he believed he had Sir John’s friendship, the events of this spring have left nothing between them but the secret which they have unwillingly shared since Francis’s betrayal on the first day of spring.   

“Sir John,” Fitzjames says, before he can modulate his tone. “I presume you wished to discuss the matter of Francis.”  

Sir John laces his fingers over his stomach. “In a manner of speaking. Specifically, my concerns are of Ice Master Blanky.”

Immediately Fitzjames flashes back to the grizzled man at the railing, a spyglass held carefully away from his eye. Had there been a flicker of undue suspicion?  “You believe Francis has told him the truth?”

“No,” Sir John says. “Francis would not do such a thing; if only because his pride prevents it. Unfortunately, Blanky is a close personal friend to the man. And I believe he may be beginning to suspect that Francis has been relieved of command in all but name alone.”  

Fitzjames stares at the table in front of him, feeling the muscle in his jaw twitch nearly in time with the ticking of that awful clock. “Would he bring his concerns to light?”  

“To anyone other than Francis himself? Difficult to say. And there is hardly anything we can do to prevent it.” Sir John leans forward to brace his laced fingers on the table, his eyebrows raised at James. “Lieutenant Fairholme may well reach the Hudson Company Outpost by the end of this month.”

“He never should have been there in the first place.”

“It is true. But I need not stress to you the importance that no living soul on this crew besides you, Francis, and myself, come to know the truth about the sledge party.”

Fitzjames’s lips twist. “Morale is low enough as it is. If they know that we sent for rescue on the very first day of spring...”

Sir John’s pause is delicate. “But of course, it was not us who sent for rescue at all. That is rather the crux of the matter.”

Fitzjames’s fist clenches on his knee. “I never should have allowed the man’s fears to sway me. If we had never abandoned _Erebus_ —”

“Nonsense.” Sir John’s smile flickers over his face as quickly as an autumn sun. “None of us could have anticipated Francis’s plans to sabotage the expedition, James. You were merely doing what you believed was right.”

The empty same empty platitudes Sir John has been pushing towards him since they learned that Crozier had ordered Lieutenant Fairholme to steal away with seven good men in the night like thieves; heading to obtain rescue they most certainly did not need. That had all be Francis—but it had been Fitzjames who Crozier first convinced of the wisdom of abandoning _Erebus_. Fitzjames, who had then helped convinced Sir John of its wisdom as well.

“There is nothing to be done of it now,” Sir John continues. “We must keep an eye on Mr. Blanky. Francis will face judgement for his insubordination upon our return to England; and in the meantime, we must maintain the illusion that all is well. For _all_ our sakes.”

After a long moment, Sir John relaxes in his seat. “I had hoped, in fact, that you might be put in charge of organizing a little diversion for the men—something to lighten their spirits in preparation for the thaw, and all the work it will entail. I had thought, perhaps, a carnival?”

 

* * *

 

 

On the way back to his berth, through the narrow hallways he has passed through hundreds of times since they left sight of the Thames that vast swath of time ago, Fitzjames stops before Crozier’s door. It is sealed, as it always is—if he were to try it, Fitzjames suspects he would also find it locked.

He is, in fact, very tempted to try it. To hammer on it and demand that Crozier face him, and face the awful mess he’s gotten them all into—but instead Fitzjames merely leans closer, alone in the hallway as he is. From within, there is nothing but a dense and swampy silence, and nothing but darkness from the crack beneath.

Fitzjames stares at it a long moment, his jaw clenching and unclenching. Then he turns and completes the final few steps of his journey, sliding open his own berth and stepping into the narrow room and sealing himself inside.


	2. Chapter 2

  _1846\. December 10 th. Winter._

 

The wardroom is always crowded these days. As short as their supply of space may be, the brandy, at least, is in surplus. Sir John made only a cursory visit to the officer’s table tonight, and so the alcohol flows even freer than otherwise. That paired with the close heat of so many bodies packed into the small room has Fitzjames feeling, ironically, too warm.

Hodgson and Irving are in the middle of some form of ideological debate, and Fitzjames has long since lost the thread. Heat blooms under his skin. For the third time since he settled at the table he has to resist the urge to dig a finger under his cravat and try to tug it looser.

“Funny, isn’t it?”

Fitzjames turns to see Alexander MacDonald with a brand glass hovering below his lips, which are turned up in a wry smile. “That we should be stranded in the middle of an icy wasteland, and yet be too _hot_.”

James smiles in spite of himself, raising his own glass. “Much about this journey has not been as we expected it.”

“Well, we were promised the adventure of a lifetime,” MacDonald says, echoing the words Sir John had the officers repeat to the men on the morning they were first frozen in.

“At least they thought to provision us well with brandy,” Fitzjames says, and immediately regrets it. It is impossible to mention such things without thinking of what provisions they _lack_ —to think of the Gouldner’s cans, stacked in _Terror_ ’s hold like dark cairn, filled with poison they may have no choice but to swallow. James knocks back his brandy, feels it burn down his throat.

“I think I’ll have some air,” Fitzjames says, and MacDonald nods. “Excuse me, gentlemen.” Fitzjames pushes his chair back to stand, the other officers nodding at him as he leaves. Irving and Hodgson do not even pause in their argument.

It’s a strange world Fitzjames enters as he steps onto deck. Tonight, there is no wind; the only sound is the ice, which moans to itself softly and then snaps like bone. The ice breathes cold in a constant exhalation, but without the wind to fling it over the rails the temperature, for now, is bearable. These scant few minutes in the still winter air are the only true comfort he’s likely to find; with the heat from down below still pressed close within his coat, and the cold air cooling his face as he turns it up to the stars

There is light, but no moon; greenish tendrils snake through the sky, rippling as a ribbon underwater. Silent and unceasing in the still air. It is by their eerie illumination that Fitzjames spies the dark figure hunched at the rail, a trail of pipe smoke curling as if to mirror the strange dance in the sky above it.

Fitzjames approaches, his footsteps quiet. He does not wish to disturb the silence that hangs about the ship as tenuous as a veil. When he comes to stand at the railing at Crozier’s side, the other man looks up, lowering his pipe for an instant. His expression in the dim witch-light is difficult to discern.

There are times when Crozier looks at him and Fitzjames feels himself transparent as glass. The sensation used to unnerve him. No longer. Half a year ago, if someone had told Fitzjames that the highlights of his long, dark days whiled away in _Terror’s_ stiff embrace would be his evening conversations with _Terror_ ’s morose captain, he would have laughed in their face. But here they are—and here they have been, night after night in this night that never ends.

“Bit cold for an evening stroll,” Crozier says at last, punctuating the dry remark by replacing his pipe between his teeth.

“Bit warm to remain below,” Fitzjames counters, each word fogging in the air. “What’s driven you out here?”

A wry smile barely touches half of Crozier’s lips as he turns back to the ice. “Only an old man’s brooding.”

Fitzjames follows his gaze, the silence between them comfortable. Beyond the ship in every direction, the ice stretches out in a flat white plain—flat, but far from featureless, and for that matter hardly white. The light which undulates between them and the stars paints the crags and floes pale green, and the shadows which lie between them range from purple to pure black.

“Beautiful,” Fitzjames says, surprised at the sound of his own voice. “Though I think I’d still prefer the mundanity of open water surrounding us on all sides.”

“Easy to forget, at times, that we are still very much at sea.” Crozier is quiet for a long moment. “We are lucky we’ve not had the pack to contend with. The ice is much less fine to look at when it’s crushing your ship like a discarded tin.”

James watches as a tendril of the lights above loops around a cluster of stars as if to swallow them up. Erebus is out there somewhere, drifting with the pack. Doomed to be crushed and dragged under the surface in time, leaving no trace of the lost ship at all. But the thought of _Terror_ being caught in the same sudden freeze as well does not bring Fitzjames any satisfaction. “It was the right decision,” he says at last, and as he does so he becomes all the more certain of it.

“It was,” Crozier says after a moment. “But I feel quite lucky, James, that you were able to see it as such. I never would have been able to convince Sir John to see reason without you.”

“I doubt my part made such a difference. Sir John would have listened eventually.”

Francis laughs without mirth. “I am not so certain. I feel quite certain that hearing your voice raised in confidence with mine was all that made the difference.”  

James smiles in spite of himself. “You need not flatter my vanity, Francis.”

And just like that, Crozier’s expression falls. Only a fraction—but in the degrees his smile drops, Fitzjames can feel the distance between them yawning as wide and impassable as that between _Terror_ and _Erebus_.

“What is it?”

Francis raises the pipe back to his lips and only glances at Fitzjames briefly. “What is what?”

“I’ve said something again. Don’t deny it,” Fitzjames says as Crozier opens his mouth. “I’ve seen that look on your face often enough this past winter. I say something I believe to be innocuous, and at once you draw away.”

Francis’s smile contains no mirth. “Am I so transparent to you, even now?”

James leans forward. “What is it, Francis? I cannot stand to think that I am acting or speaking carelessly in some way I myself am unaware of.”

“That is not it at all. It is only that sometimes you remind me of someone I used to know.” Crozier’s eyes shift away.

“Who was he?”

But though the silence drags on for quite some time, at last Crozier answers him. “A friend.”

“And where is he now?” Fitzjames asks, though from the manner of Crozier’s speech he suspects he already knows.

Francis’s eyes are dark, and glint with the green of the aurora. They are turned not towards Fitzjames, but rather to the endless ice. “He died.”

At last Fitzjames tears his gaze from Crozier’s expression. The pain he sees gathered in the set of his mouth is not Fitzjames’s to see. “I am sorry” Fitzjames pauses, watches the way Crozier’s fingers tighten on his pipe. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong. I suppose it’s just strange to speak of him, now.” Crozier’s eyes shift as if he cannot bear to look Fitzjames in the eye while they discuss such matters.

On an impulse, Fitzjames reaches out to clasp the man’s shoulder. Beneath his gloved hand he can feel the solid weight of Crozier’s body, but none of its heat. “Then let us speak of more cheerful subjects. The winter is no time to journey into any greater darkness.”

At his touch, he feels Crozier stiffen; and then, consciously relax. When he at last meets Fitzjames’s eyes again, his expression has softened; and grown more pained, at that. After a moment Fitzjames releases him, and Crozier seems to slump.

“Did I ever,” Fitzjames says, “tell you the story of how I was locked up in an Afghani prison?

At that, Crozier’s smile widens ever so slightly. “Yes,” he says, though Fitzjames cannot recall when he might have shared it before. “But tell me again. Only make it quicker, James, for I’ll not lose a finger or toe to frostbite for the sake of a narrative flourish.”

Fitzjames grins, his breath misting in the air, and begins.

 

* * *

 

_1847\. June 22 nd. Summer._

 

Goodsir tilts his head back to breathe in the fresh spring air, an experience akin to having his throat scoured with lye.

 Around him there is nothing but void, the upper half blue and the lower white—at the edges the colors bleed into each other as if the ice is rising into the sky like smoke. Merely the effect of mirage; he has seen icebergs drifting miles above the horizon, and a second sun trapped in the plain of white far below. Reflections of reflections. The air itself plays tricks here, as beautiful as they are strange.

He also has an awful sunburn on every inch of the exposed skin of his face, but he is choosing to focus on the positives.

“Doctor Goodsir!”

Goodsir turns towards the voice. Farther below the pressure ridge where he has climbed for a better view, a dark figure beckons. Goodsir raises an arm in acknowledgement, immediately almost slipping on the ice—then waves once more with slightly less gusto, and turns his full attention to the precarious task of descent.

By the time he reaches the base, the rest of the hunting party has almost finished packing their spirit stoves. Goodsir turns away from the sight of one of the men, anonymous in his bundled coats and Welsh wig, finishes scraping the bottom of a Gouldner’s can with his spoon.

Goodsir does not eat of them. He claims, with a sick twisting in his gut unrelated to the food itself, that they do not agree with him. Sir John has stressed the importance that the men not be told that the tins they so often prefer to weevil-ridden biscuits and leathery meat will, with enough time and in high enough quantities, undo them. No matter how much game and seal they hunt, there is simply not enough food to do without the tins entirely. Goodsir had argued that the men had the right to know, but Sir John had been adamant: for the good of morale, the men must not know. Knowing that it was necessary did nothing to assuage the guilt weighing heavily in Goodsir’s chest as he spies the small pile of empty tins at the center of the camp.

As he finishes approaching the rough camp, one of the heavily bundled figures steps forward to clasp his shoulder.

“You attained quite the summit, Doctor,” Lieutenant Gore says, tugging his scarf below his chin so Goodsir can see his smile. The Lieutenant has always been kind to him, and patient with his physical failings; a number of slips and falls have helped Goodsir attain an even greater depth of respect for the men in harness, who hauled the sledge deftly on meager meals of nothing but dried meat and biscuits—and of course, the tins.

“Have there been any sightings of game?” Goodsir asks, fingering the strap of his pack.

Gore squints to the north, the skin around his own eyes red and chapped. “Tommy saw a ptarmigan to the north. We’ll set off that way, and hope to net ourselves a seal—or perhaps even a bear.”

As the men resume their slow and inexorable force on the sledge, Goodsir falls into step beside Gore, slowing his pace to match. “I very much hope to see a white bear,” Goodsir says, working to dissipate his enthusiasm. “I had hoped to see one long before now—had heard stories from the men that they would even swim abreast of the ship like porpoises.”

Gore laughs breathlessly. “Quite a nasty porpoise they would make. I’m certain you’ll see your bear, Goodsir—and if we are all of us very lucky, you may even get to eat it.”

“I had also hoped,” Goodsir says, stumbling over an icy outcrop made all but invisible in the sun, “to be able to examine the creature’s body before the men set to butchering it, in the event that one is shot.”

“Nothing would please me more than to give you the opportunity, Doctor—but we will see what time allows.”

Goodsir’s earnest thanks are lost beneath the grinding of the sledge.

They see no further sign of the ptarmigan on their trek further north, but shoot two seals near a hole in the ice and nearly have a third—but the creature slipped back into the depths at the sound of the initial gunshots, and they see neither hide nor hair of it in the half hour they wait for it to resurface. Goodsir spends that time sketching the seals, and doing a quick autopsy of one while the men butcher the other and load its meat and blubber onto the sledge; he has studied parts of the creatures before, but this is his first time seeing them so close and whole.

He is so absorbed in his note-taking that he does not register the flurry of activity around him until a pair of hands wrenched the second seal away just as Goodsir was completing his sketch of the creature’s lungs. His head jerked up as he blinked in startlement, to see the men hurrying to load the sledge. One of the marines—private Pilkington, if he is not mistaken—claps Goodsir on the shoulder.

“Lieutenant says he thinks he saw a bear in the ice,” he says, with a gesture towards the rough upthrust of pressure ridges and sastrugi a mile further to the north. Even from this distance, it looks quite the evil labyrinth of spires and crevasses; but the men are already hauling the sledge towards it without hesitation, and it is certainly not Goodsir’s place to voice is apprehensions. He packs his supplies as quickly as he was able, following the sledge tracks at a jog and stumbling only occasionally until he catches up with the men.

The jumble of ice looms higher the closer they come to it, as if pushing upwards for every step they take. Every color of the rainbow is reflected in its shapes; the deep blue and purples and greens of the shadows. The sun is swinging as near to the horizon as it will come for weeks, and its light muddied by the atmosphere stains the jagged tips of the ice yellow and red. 

He watches the sledge halt at the base of the pressure ridges, and the men clamber up the slope to the crack leading into the labyrinth. Gore is the last to enter, his gun in his hands. Goodsir almost calls out, though he is not certain why.

In the end, he remains silent. If it is a bear they are hunting, he will not be the one to spook it. He knows better than any the importance of fresh meat, now. Before the rest of the party can draw too far ahead, Goodsir follows Lieutenant Gore into the red-tinged ice.

 

* * *

 

 

William Gibson is not a bad person.

He knows this with a certainty that has only grown in the past months. He is, at the worst, a victim of repeatedly bad circumstances. Circumstances which have only continued to deteriorate. The ice will not release them; the food rations dwindle; the cramped quarters incubate resentment like a foul smell.

And of course, the repeated attentions of Cornelius Hickey, who has crawled his way into Gibson’s confidences like one of the ever-present rats which wind through the narrow gaps in the ship’s holds. Hickey is the sort of man who excels at creeping through the small spaces in the world, the in-between ways. The sort of man with a nose for dark places, close places, places where nothing is noticed or seen. The avenues that others would never think to travel. Avenues like Gibson.

“It’s alright, Billy.” Hickey’s eyes crinkle with his smile. In the dark hold Gibson can hardly see, but he can picture Hickey’s expression perfectly. It’s the one he wears when he is about to get something that he wants. “Tell me what you heard.”

Gibson clears his throat, shuffling his feet. “The officers. They mentioned the tinned foods again, but they still haven’t said what the issue is—at least not when I had the chance to hear. Sir John still seems confident that we will yet see a thaw.”

Hickey strokes his beard, saying nothing. Obviously deep in thought.

“Cornelius,” Gibson says. “If there’s something wrong with our food, ought we not tell the others? They still serve us tinned rations once a day.”

“All things in good time. We can’t go to the men with our concerns if we don’t have any evidence, can we?”

Hickey stares at Gibson until he nods. He can feel the ring Hickey presented him burning into his chest like a brand, hotter and more uncomfortable the longer the silence draws out.  

“Something you’re not telling me, Billy?”

Gibson remains silent. Hickey takes a step closer, and Gibson almost steps back—but there’s no brush of contact, no clever fingers against his shoulder. Hickey merely stares. The weight of that gaze is worse than the touch of any hand. “It’s alright. You can say.”

Gibson lets out a harsh breath, looking towards the ladder which will lead him out of this dark and awful place where he allows dark and awful things to happen. He doesn’t move towards it. That time has long past. “Sir John said,” Gibson says, staring at the floorboards with his hands on his hips, “that when the thaw comes this spring, he wants us to try the passage again.”

Hickey is quiet for a good long while. In the dark, his eyelashes brush his cheek like a slice of shadow. When at last he raises his eyes, the light they catch is a pinpoint in the dark. “You’re certain of this?”

“Sir John used no unclear terms.”

In the silence, Gibson swears he can hear the ever-present skittering in the walls. But perhaps it is only the ice. “Well now,” Hickey says, his voice soft. “That _is_ news.”

Stirring to movement at once, Hickey slides past him without a brush of contact; until his hand settles on Gibson’s shoulder, squeezing once and hard. “Thank you, Billy. You’re doing the right thing, here.”

There is something about the way that Cornelius thanks him that makes Gibson feel dirtier than even a year and a half living aboard this festering ship can compare to. “Cornelius,” he hisses at Hickey’s back. “What are you going to do?”

Hickey steps into the light of the open hatch above, and climbs the ladder into that brightness without a glance back.

 

* * *

 

Francis Crozier does not believe in God, but he does believe in Hell.

Hell is the half-empty bottle of whiskey inside of his locked sideboard, whose presence he can feel through the wall of wood like the heat radiating off a boiler. Hell is the key in his hand, its teeth digging into the meat of his palm, which would fit so neatly into the sideboard’s lock. Hell is the sense-memory of the way the key sticks halfway, the extra force needed to send the tumblers the rest of the way; and the sound of the bottle scraping against the wood, the reek of it—

Hell is a trail of dead men across the shale. A leg bone, marrow sucked, lying in a dead cooking fire. Hell is blood on the ice, and the screams of men he was not able to save.

Hell is being forced to do it all over again.

Francis braces his elbows on his knees and propped his head in his hands. His right fist presses to his temple, the key to his liquor cabinet still trapped at its center. A couple hundred miles less, from their position on the right side of King William Land. Knowing of the lead in their food, for what little good it did; and the knowledge—Francis’s knowledge, earned over years—of Netsilik ice-fishing, which did slightly more. The forewarning of which men to watch. Such narrow, miniscule margins when set against the scope of the great white nothing which has swallowed them. Even now, Crozier cannot be sure it will be enough to save them.

He wants a drink. He _needs_ a drink.

Today. He will start it today. He will stand up, leave the whiskey in the sideboard, deliver the key to Jopson and tell him to pour the rest out, then make his way straight to _Terror’s_ med bay and deliver himself into Doctor MacDonald’s hands.

He closes his eyes. Though it is nearing the hour when all men who are able will reasonably be abed, outside the lightless, airless spaces of the ship the sun will barely be skimming the horizon; an unclosing, all-seeing eye gazing pitilessly upon them all. Crozier smiles, and then lowers his head gently into his hands. It is foolish to think that anyone or anything is watching them here.

It must be done. It _will_ be done. Only—Christ. Once was enough. Once was, perhaps, all he is capable of.

From outside, the sound of footsteps. Crozier listens carefully, as he has each time a set of boots has happened past his berth. Before now they have continued on to the wardroom, or stopped at a different door; but this time, he hears them stop at the door adjacent to his, and the sound of the wooden door sliding open, and then closed.

The wanting sways in him as if the ship is no longer icebound, as if the deck is tilting beneath him in every direction with the bottle in its center, impossible gravity tugging him in. He lurches to his feet—and then stumbles for the door.

The hallway is empty, but the rooms around him are occupied. Crozier stops before the door adjacent to his own, his hand slapping the wood as he braces himself on the wall, listening for the sounds within. There are none.

“James.” He keeps his voice low, as futile as the effort is; on any ship privacy is a distant memory. But on a ship as crowded as this, the men around him may as well be brushing up against his very thoughts. “I’d like a moment.”

The silence stretches on for long enough that Crozier’s hand on the wood clenches into a fist, prepared to pound on it until James answers him, propriety and the other officers be damned—but then, that voice. After all these months, it does not fail to make his throat bob in a dry swallow. “Can it wait, Francis? I’m already abed.”

Francis wrenches the door back. In the narrow space beyond, James is indeed sitting on the edge of his bed—but still in his waistcoat, the shine of his pocket watch stark against the black, clearly no closer to preparing for sleep than Crozier is.

Francis steps inside and closes the door behind him. When he turns back to James, the man’s eyes are narrowed.

“I have no interest in doing this with you now, Francis.”

“And I would quite frankly be anywhere else.” Crozier leans back against the closed door. It’s an unspoken and unintended threat, he knows, blocking the single exit. But in James’s small berth, there is nowhere else for him to stand. “I require an answer, James.”

“I’ve already given you one.”

“I require a _different_ answer.”

“For Christ’s sakes, Francis.” James glares up at him. He has not even bothered to rise from his bed. He looks very tired; his hair is slightly a muss, as if he had been dragging his fingers through it moments before Crozier had opened the door. Crozier does not want to notice these details about the man; not the familiar dimple in between his brows that signals true worry, not the way his fingers rub at the heartline on his palm. He cannot help but see them. He has, after all, had years of practice. But these details are relics of a dead man, and he brushes past them with the callousness he has had to relearn, step by step, since he awoke on the _Terror_ eight months ago.

“James.” Crozier leans forward slightly, his voice lowering. “We _must_ begin preparations.”

“Francis, I will not hear of this.”

“You _will_ hear it. If we are to walk out of this place—”

“I said _enough_.” At once James is just before him, close, so close that the words he speaks in little more than a whisper ring between them like a gunshot. “How long have you been bending my ear with these wild concerns? Demanding I once again use my leverage with Sir John—which has much lessened, thanks in great part to your efforts—”

“That was a small price to pay,” Crozier says, and immediately recognizes his mistake. At times he is talking to the wrong James—the James who had come to see what Sir John’s folly had cost them. Not the man who stands before him now, eyes narrowing in the dim light of his berth.

“That is quite easy for you to say; you never _had_ his regard. I can see now why that is.” James looks away, his mouth twisting. “I only wish I had the sense to see it sooner.”

Crozier takes a small step closer, then stops himself. He stares down at the floorboards rather than at James’s face. It is easier, sometimes, that way. “You may think of me whatever you will. I cannot begrudge you that. But this is not about us.”

James laughs drily. “Of course not. This is about ordering all of our men to pack up and walk over six hundred miles, with the thaw mere weeks away—”

“There _will be no thaw_ , James.” Crozier speaks each word through gritted teeth, wishing he could step forward and take the man by the shoulders, shake him until the James he knew re-emerged. “Not this summer, and not the next. We need. To prepare.”

“There is no way for you to possibly know that.”

Francis throws his hands up, resisting the urge to let his head fall into them. “I _do_ know, James. I cannot explain how—”

“Then it’s hardly worth discussing.”

“—But I _know_ ,” Crozier finishes, his voice rising in spite of himself, “and if I cannot get you to listen—”

“This ends now.” As close as he is, when James raises a finger between them to cut Crozier short, it hovers nearly above his lips. “I will not be an accessory to your attempts to sabotage this mission. Not again.”

“ _James_ —”

“Do not make me order you, Francis.”

Francis stares at him. He can remember, quite clearly, what it felt like when his knuckles made hard contact with the line of James’s jaw. A humorless grimace spreads over his lips. “And if I refuse?”

James laughs in his face, a single, terse, nearly silent outburst. Crozier can feel the air of it stirring his face, they stand so close together. “You petty, petulant man,” Fitzjames says. “You—”

Were it not for the soft knock on the paneling of James’s door, Crozier is not entirely certain what he would have done.

“Come,” Fitzjames snaps without tearing his eyes from Crozier’s face, and slowly the door slides open.

“Begging your pardon, sirs,” Mr. Bridgens says. From the tone of his voice, he is at least vaguely aware of what he is interrupting.

“What is it?” Crozier snaps, half out of habit, and half to see James’s eyes narrow at Crozier addressing his steward in such a way.

Bridgens hesitates so long that Crozier almost whirls on him. “Lieutenant Gore’s hunting party has returned—”

“Thank you, Mr. Bridgens, that will be all” Crozier snaps, his eyes not leaving James’s face—if only to appreciate the twitch that moves from his eyes to his lips, knowing that in Franklin’s eyes, Crozier no longer has the authority to dismiss the steward—that John Bridgens may as well outrank him. 

But Bridgens still lingers in the doorway, his cap in his hands; and when Crozier at last turns to face him, a harsh rebuke on his tongue, the man’s expression draws him up short. His face is as grey as the grave.

“Sirs, if I may,” Bridgens says. “I’m afraid it’s bad news.”

“For God’s sakes, man,” Fitzjames says, his voice low and fraught. But Crozier already knows. He can see it in Bridgen’s face, but more than that—good Christ, he _knows_.

Bridgens blinks, and lowers his gaze. “It’s lieutenant Gore. I haven’t heard the full story myself, but—he’s dead. Of that much I am quite certain. The men—they’re saying he was killed by a bear.”

Francis slumps back against the wall as gravity upturns itself once again. 


End file.
